Laguna home on 'Extreme Living' for sale

A contemporary, ocean-view Laguna Beach house set on a steep lot and featured on HGTV's "Extreme Living'' has hit the market.

The asking price is just under $2.5 million.

The house, with a colorful exterior that evokes big Lego blocks or a painting by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, sits on a parcel that drops 90 feet from street level. The 2,572-square-foot home includes three bedrooms, five bathrooms, an open kitchen, a living room, family room, office and multi-level, wrap-around decks with spectacular views of the canyon, hillsides and Pacific Ocean.

An additional 600-square-foot space at the bottom of the house gives the property a fourth level. It's now an artist's studio.

Dariouche Showghi, a Cal Poly Pomona professor, architect and contractor, built the unconventional house in 2001. His efforts and those of a small crew of laborers, including his rock-climbing son, were documented on "Extreme Living,'' a show featuring "homes outside the mainstream.''

The program noted the original state of the 8,040-square-foot lot: "It was covered with shrub and seemed to drop away into the Pacific,'' the announcer said. "What would you build on that?''

Showghi was undaunted by the seeming inhospitality of the property. In interviews, he said geological reports showed solid bedrock just beneath the topsoil. Caissons in the home's foundation secure it to the bedrock, and the structure's steel-frame and concrete construction was designed to withstand an earthquake, he said.

Still, the project meant having to move workers and materials up and down the plunging slope, including Showghi's son Kurosh, who found a creative way to clear the brush. "I learned how to rappel with a chainsaw,'' Kurosh Showghi told HGTV, "and not cut my own leg off in the process.''

The home, at 527 Nyes Place, is listed by Marcus Skenderian of Surterre Properties. Dariouche Showghi died in 2010, and his widow, Gretha Showghi, is selling the house, Skenderian said.